More Wahlberger Robot Nonsense

I am trying desperately to remember anything about the last Transformers movie, but it’s giving me a headache, because the only thing I clearly remember about that movie was that it gave me a headache. Mark Wahlberg was in it, replacing Shia LaBeouf as the franchise lead, I remember that. He was supposed to be from Texas but still tawked in his Bahstahn accent, brah. His name was something like Gear McTeague? Well Gear McTeague is back in the fifth Transformers movie, Transformers: The Last Knight. I guess these movies are now time-travelling fantasy epics. Sure. Why not.

This trailer is hilariously self-important with its overdramatic electro cover of Do You Realize and slow-mo shots of everything. There’s no denying Michael Bay as a visual stylist, but he’s reaching self-parody levels. This trailer looks like if SNL made a Game of Thrones trailer in the style of Michael Bay. And there is no telling what the f*ck this movie is about—I’ve been on a Michael Bay set, there are no scripts, just Bay making explosion sounds to indicate “story”. Also Transformers fighting each other continues to look like a trash compacter and a garbage disposal humping. These movies are nightmares for our eyeballs.

Let’s take a guess as to what it’s about, though. It looks like Gear McTeague gets arrested because he’s the robot whisperer and he’s so tough and macho that even when the actual soldiers are like, “This is f*cked,” he screams, “Naw, Tawmmy, we gawta keep goin’!” because Gear McTeague is a Mark Wahlberg character which means he must be the MOST MAN on screen. There’s a new hot chick because Michael Bay’s Ferrari needed to be waxed, and there’s also a pubescent girl as a nod to things like “positive representation”, and you know when a studio flak brought that up to Bay he made a jerk-off motion and rolled his eyes. These characters are all connected by one scene in which they will appear standing at the same intersection of downtown Detroit.

Meanwhile the Transformers are fighting humans or each other or both, and Optimus Prime is doing his best Mega Maid impression and the trailer is set up like we’re supposed to care but does anyone care about Optimus Prime? Seriously, I don’t actually know if anyone cares about Optimus Prime. Then he comes back to Earth and kills Bumble Bee because toy sales have slowed and it’s time to introduce a new toy car. And all this is happening because when Marvel went up for sale in 2009 Paramount didn’t buy in and they lost the Avengers licensing and now some Paramount exec cries himself to sleep every night and makes Transformer movies instead in order to inflict his pain on the world. Congratulations, it’s working, these movies hurt all of us.